Martin Heidegger Death Analysis

Alper ÖZESMER Martin Heidegger’s notion of ‘Death’ in Being and Time

ABSTRACT: The purpose of this paper is to consider the relation between death and authenticity, and accordingly to investigate the position of ‘death’ in Martin Heidegger’s understanding of authentic existence in line with his existential analysis of Dasein. This exploration is inspired by the emphasis on concept of authenticity in Heidegger’s overall philosophy and is based on the perspective that his project the grasp of Dasein as a whole through the analysis of ‘Being’ as being-towards-death. The main argument of this paper is that Dasein’s authenticity can be revealed only the acceptance of one’s own death, -namely its being-towards-death.

1. Introduction

The notion

Death and authentic existence are two major issues of division two. Heidegger elaborates that it is certainly the nature of Dasein’s awareness of death which directly allows to get a better understanding of what it means to be. Accordingly, in this section Heidegger thinks death in attempting to grasp “the possibility of being-a-whole of Dasein” . Since his project is to investigate what it means to be in general and this meaning is disclosed by Dasein, the final configuration of meaning of being demands a primordial interpretation. This possibility can not reveal only in investigations of origin of existence but it can be revealed also in its ‘end’. Death is indeed an end but not in a chronological sense. At this point, one should remember that Dasein’s death is not an orientation which takes Dasein its absolute end, rather it is a way of being . So, one should ask about “the ontological meaning of the dying of the person who dies, as a possibility-of-Being which belong to [its]

The Question of Being and the Ontological Analysis of Dasein

When we use the term “Being” generally, we refer everything such as imaginary or exist. In this sense, Being is the most general and universal concept and also it is the emptiest concept. Accordingly, the question of Being is superfluous and it is the most unnecessary question to ask. In early stage of Being and Time, Heidegger makes it clear that the question is not about the being but it is about the “meaning” of Being. To get a better understanding of human beings and the world, he begins by asking “what is the meaning of Being in general?” In other words, “what things are” is only accessible insofar they are intelligible to us; we should inquiry them by clarifying the meaning of things in general. And, clarifying of things in general “is tantamount to clarifying the possibility of having any understanding of Being at all – an understanding which itself belongs to the constitution of the entity called Dasein” , namely human being. In order to analyze meaning of the Being, we need to analyze meaning of the Being of human being. But the inquiry of the existentiell analytic of Dasein is not enough according to Heidegger. We need to ask what the existential structure of Dasein is. The analysis of Dasein is the inquiry of the conditions of possibility of understanding Being in